Friday, November 11, 2011

Through a Glass Darkly

In class today we talked about Brian Evenson's "Contagion," about the long page detailing dozens of kinds of barbed wire. It felt, despite its tight focus, like a window onto a whole world. I thought of Bolano's 2666 and of the hundreds of pages that catalogue the deaths of women in Juarez. Again, the accumulation adds up finally, patiently, to a whole world. And then my thoughts turned, as they so often do, to the list of my brother's possessions at his death. For the second time (the repetition doubles the accumulation) I post the list:

31 July 1991, Orem

In
the afternoon sunshine, John’s death certificate glows bright green on my desk.

Never
married.

Sex:
Male.

Not
a veteran.

Autopsy,
yes.

The sun transforms the books on the
north wall into an ordered riot of colors.

The coroner told us John had never
tested positive for AIDS. Otherwise his name would have been in a national
database.

On the radio this afternoon there was
an interview with a Utah AIDS patient. We all, he said, feel immortal for quite
some time.

1 August 1991, Orem

I still have John’s things, but what
sense does it make to keep them? I make a list under a rubric that feels like a
pre-cut dress for a paper doll:

Personal Effects

A large black plastic clock with red
hands. The face displays a stylized eagle and the words Miller Genuine Draft
Light, Cold Filtered. The second hand lurches in quartz-driven, one-second
segments around a brass post.

Greasy running shoes, the soles
cracked through.

A pair of stiff, resoled, black-leather
lace-up shoes.

One small khaki-colored can: “Emergency
Drinking Water.”

A black-painted cardboard African
mask.

A life-sized bas-relief plaster bust
of a Roman soldier. He wears a gold-plumed helmet and a black breastplate
decorated with a lion’s head.

Ash trays: 1) stamped metal, round;
2) white-and-black porcelain shaped like the collar of a formal dress shirt
with black tie; 3) heavy glass square with a line drawing of a grotesquely
earnest smoker and the text: Smoking is Very Glamorous, Idaho Interagency
Committee on Smoking and Health.

Two unwashed pots.

A frying pan.

Two forks.

Three spoons.

Three wooden-handled cooking knives.

A stainless-steel butter knife with a
red-brown substance burnt onto both sides of the blade.

A metal box stuffed with yellowed
recipe cards.

Kitchen Consultations, Favorite Recipes of the University
of California Doctors’ Wives Association.

One set of car keys.

A heavy ten-speed bicycle, both tires
flat.

An aluminum bicycle pump.

A dirty green backpack holding
several bicycle parts.

A black-and-white TV, encased in
white plastic, and a separate rabbit-ears antenna.

A small GE radio, missing its battery
cover.

A Dylan Thomas poem, typed out and
taped to a cupboard: Do not go gentle into that good night.

A framed quotation from Ayn Rand: If
I had one desire in this world, it would be to desire something.

One condom, still sealed in plastic; PRIME,
Lubricated with SK-70.

Handwritten IOU’s for the Cactus Bar.
$5, $10, and $20 denominations.

1990 Pocket Pal – handwritten
addresses and telephone numbers.

Newspaper and magazine clippings in
an imitation leather briefcase.

A manila envelope containing legal
papers.

PUPPIES, a 1990 Calendar marked with
several hand-written notes.

3 ballpoint pens and a blue plastic
pencil sharpener.

A black nylon wallet. Inside, a photo
of a woman in her sixties, a water-damaged photo of a red-faced infant, a
Social Security card (585-46-4127), a Boise Public Library Card, and $203 in
bills.

A large-toothed red plastic comb with
handle and a matching red-handled brush with black nylon bristles.

A bottle of aspirin.

MAX FOR MEN hair drier.

A yellow toothbrush.

Curity, wet-pruf adhesive tape.

Four TELFA sterile pads and one
band-aid.

Plastic sunglasses.

A one-edged razor blade.

A 100-tablet bottle of Advanced
Formula Centrum, High Potency Multivitamin-Multimineral Formula. From A to
Zinc. Expiration Date Oct. 93. There are 115 tablets.

26 grey, green, red, or white
matchbooks advertising The Interlude Bar & Grill in Boise. A stylized young
woman kneels to consider her putt. Her left hand holds her putter, her right
hand a martini.

A green matchbook advertises Free
Cash Grants: Call 1-900-USA-RICH. Valuable Money Making Information and the
ABC’s of Receiving FREE Money from the Government. Now the one dollar per
minute two dollar first minute charge is the first step to RICHES.

Nine Kent III Ultra Light Cigarettes.

A burlap-covered corkboard. Glued to
the top of the burlap is a black paper cross. A hand points upward toward the
cross. A pair of lightning bolts. At the bottom bold letters spell ONE WAY.
Four magazine photos have been thumbtacked over the Christian display. Two of
them feature similarly posed electric-haired women, one white, one black, both
coyly shirtless. The other two photos show the shaved, blindfolded heads of two
black women against a chain-link fence.

Two posters from the Monterey Jazz
Festival, 1982 and 1983: trumpets standing on chairs.

A poster of a fantasy landscape: castle
and dragon and hero and princess.

4 comments:

there is something about these lists, it reminds of the iliad's catalogue of ships and i remember baumgarten having written somewhere how those lists are a different sort of attention, but i can't remember anymore where...i read your rilke essay about stehen und i like it very much.

The list is of real things, tangible things, inanimate stand-ins for the dead. They tell a story of badly paid work and sickness and a mind at work and of (distant) family. Although I chose the words and their order, the accumulation is almost untouched by my mind/language, with the exception of the statement about the Kant thing/book itself being missing.

Glad you liked the Rilke essay. If you're interested further in my work on standing, I could send the manuscript of the Kleist essay.

yes. and because the things so stronlgy show the person -- i don't want to say thing itself -- missing it's even more moving...

thank you for asking about the manuscript, i needed to think about this, because i am not sure i have enough time to do proper justice to it or let alone be able to say something smart about it, but yes, do send it please...